Saturday, March 17, 2012

The Lynne Featherstone definition of marriage

Just one month ago, I argued against same sex marriage on the grounds that it would redefine marriage as an open-ended commitment ceremony to mark the love between people rather than an exclusive, life-long union of a man and a woman:

At the moment Australian law defines marriage as:

the union of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.

That definition of marriage makes sense within heterosexual relationships. If we understand the
masculine and feminine as complementary, then bringing one man and one woman together is meaningful in creating a unity out of two complementary parts. On the physical side, this uniting of male and female is what naturally produces offspring, and the care of such offspring underlies the lifetime commitment across generations within a family.

If it is possible for two men or for two women to marry then marriage can no longer be understood in this way. It can no longer be understood as a natural unity of two complementary opposites, and
the sexuality within this marriage can no longer be understood, in a larger sense, as serving the purposes of creating new life within a multi-generational family.

Instead, marriage must be understood as a commitment ceremony to celebrate the love between people. But that's an open-ended definition. Why, according to this newer definition, must marriage be exclusive? Can't we love more than one person? And why must it be enduring? If the love goes, then why wouldn't the marriage?

Was I wrong in assuming that marriage was being radically redefined? The evidence is already coming in that I wasn't far off the mark. In the UK, the coalition government headed by the "conservative" David Cameron is attempting to push through same sex marriage. It has been now been revealed that the words "husband" and "wife" will be removed from official forms as part of the push toward same sex marriage and replaced by the gender neutral terms "partner" or "spouse".

That's another step toward the liberal end goal of making sex distinctions not matter in society. But what really grabbed me was a statement by Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat "Equalities" Minister. In defending the same sex marriage legislation she declared:

I believe that if a couple love each other and want to commit to a life together, they
should have the option of a civil marriage, whatever their gender.

Marriage is a celebration of love and should be open to everyone.

Lynne Featherstone

Isn't that pretty much what I warned was happening? Lynne Featherstone has redefined marriage as a "celebration of love" which should be "open to everyone." Even if it's not her intention, that definition of marriage will permit just about any permutation and combination of people to be married.

Let's say I love one woman, so I celebrate my love for her by getting married. But then I meet another woman whom I also love. Why shouldn't I then also marry her? After all, according to Lynne Featherstone marriage is there to celebrate the love I feel and should be open to everyone. So why shouldn't it be open to woman number two?

And what if I meet a woman and fall in love and marry her and have some children. But then I no longer feel the same love for her. Why wouldn't I decide the marriage to be over there and then? After all, according to Lynne Featherstone, marriage is there to celebrate love. If I don't feel the love, then why would I consider myself still to be married?

Lynne Featherstone is mistaken if she believes that you can have the traditional goods of marriage (stable, lifelong commitment) whilst redefining marriage itself to be a celebration of love that is open to everyone. Someone who understands marriage as she does will not have a good chance of holding to a lifelong commitment to monogamy (as it happens, she is divorced).

In opposition to Lynne Featherstone we have to insist that our sex does matter when it comes to marriage and to relationships and that the form of family life also matters a great deal.

29 comments:

One thing about this gay marriage thing that never really seems to be discussed is the effect that gay marriage will have on couples who have already committed to each other under traditional marriage. Gay marriage will undermine and trivialize traditional marriage. Some couples may no longer consider the bond so sacred, and will therefore not try as hard to preserve the marriage. Of course this will have flow-on effects on children, society, etc.

The effects on the creation and rearing of children has been staggering. Already there are calls for gender neutral words such as "Parent A" and "Parent B" instead of Father and Mother because these words are discriminatory.

Gay marriage will undermine and trivialize traditional marriage.

The house is already burning down thanks to feminists and now homosexuals want to add more fuel to the fire. Isn't that simply wonderful? I really do believe that in the future traditional conservatives will start having their own ceremonies. The law and the state cannot be trusted in these matters in its current form. It has become corrupted. Marriage will unfortunately have to become privatized, which also renders it meaningless for society since it is not public and therefore validates liberal culture of disdain for marriage. The only way out is for the Western world to reject liberalism and I believe that this take some time. The Western world won't turn and probably will only reject liberalism when it has annihilated and destroyed everything. What a sad state of events.

Another interesting factor: the effects of the sexual revolution on marriage. Hasn't contraception completely turned sex into a recreative sport? Since people are having sex outside of marriage wouldn't they delay marriage as well? Wouldn't they reject it and simply choose cohabitation?

The two biggest forces against traditional marriage are feminism and the sexual revolution. If these can be tackled, perhaps things will turn around.

If I don't feel the love, then why would I consider myself still to be married?

A reason women divorce: "I love you but I am not in love with you."

The understanding of marriage has become distorted. It's not about "feeling in love" where one marries the person your father and mother forbid you to just because you want to rebel against society's norms and want to "feel the love". People have to be realistic and practical as well (a bit like the methods of arranged marriages). Can you picture yourself with this person 50 years from now? If not then don't get married.

Sex differences between men and women are real and they are innate. Contrary to the claims of delusional feminists (aka "pregnancy is barbaric") and "transgenders" (cosmetic surgery for the gender confused and insane) all relationships can never be equal. Can you take a people seriously who thinks that a man and a woman is the same as two men and two women? How about two men and one woman? Or two women and one man? Or three men? Or three women? This is madness. I've had a couple of acquaintances tell me stories of reversing "transgender" surgery, who aided men and women who mutilated their sexual organs to redeem themselves. These poor people had problems and were fed lies by the LGBT community for years and years. According to psycopath liberals race and sex are all social constructs but sexual orientation (perhaps the most fuzzy of areas) is genetic. Yikes.

It seems to me that monogamous, lifelong marriage works very well when both husband and wife are enculturated to the idea that marriage has a larger existence and meaning as an institution that we as individuals fit ourselves to.

This understanding will usually involve beliefs about what it means to be a father and husband, or a wife and mother, and what we owe to our children, to our wider family, to society, and, if we are religious, to God.

Someone enculturated in this way is likely not to follow passing emotions in deciding their commitment to their marriage, but to orient themselves to keeping their regard for their spouse at the best level possible. If both husband and wife do this, then over time it's likely that a loving union will result even if there are difficulties along the way.

Unfortunately, there is a trend to understand marriage differently, as being a commitment ceremony to celebrate the love we have for someone. I doubt if that's enough to hold a culture of monogamous marriage together as it's focused on immediate, personal feelings.

Marriage as a legal concept has has been murdered. Its been trivialised by the demands of deviants and made horribly unattractive to men by feminism and female entitlement syndrome.

Its only a matter of time before leviathan's tentacles try and strangle the religious aspects. Lets put marriage out of its misery before the contagion spreads.

Instead of marriage, lets create a system of contracts thats spells out the nature of the relationship. The contract will be legally binding and enterable by any any two adults.

We'll leave marriage for the religions. If two catholics wish to be married, they can still enjoy the sacrament of marriage delivered by the Church. the marriage wont be legally recognised..only the legal civil contract will be recognised. But since when do we need caesar's approval?

The deviants can have thier unions, and the religious folks wont have to worry about Gay inquisitors forcing gay 'marriages' down everyone's throats. In addition the legally binding contract will provide for a much more equitable and attractive framework for married relationships between men and women. Instead of the modern system where men are turned into lifelong work serfs and alimony slaves for princess, the contracts will spell out the nature of the relationship, the conditions under which it can be dissolved, the division of assets and the custody of children.

This has been done before and it's going to be done again, many times. Under the understanding that "marriage" is just a celebration of "love" this is inevitable.

"Point: Single people should have the same rights as couples

I believe everyone has the right to marry, regardless of sexual preference."

And in a self-help therapy context, where loving yourself first is the basis of all good things, perhaps everyone should have such marriage first, whatever other marriages they may later contract.

But I think it will be women, in practice, that continue to marry themselves. This is a woman's dream day, for which she is often or generally willing so sacrifice a honeymoon and the financial soundness of the marriage itself.

Self love is holy, and so beautiful with a woman who knows that no man is worthy of her, that it has inspired songs. Not only the Whitney Houston classic (lyrics here) but a great set of lyrics in The Worm Ouroboros.

Lynne Featherstone is indeed Jewish, not only in her ethnicity but in her status (she is a politically powerful millionairess), and in her aggressive political activity.

In 2010 she was brought in to the coalition government as the new Equalities Minister, and promptly went on the attack.

"Mrs Featherstone said she was ‘very disappointed’ at the lack of women at the top and condemned as ‘male and pale’ the two negotiating teams that thrashed out the terms of the coalition deal.

She said that on being offered the job, she told the PM: ‘We must do better.’"

She's ungrateful, grasping ("Lib Dem Overseas Aid spokeswoman Lynne Featherstone has been forced to return huge quantities of Commons? stationery after running up a £22,000 bill in just one month"), entitled ("she dialled 999 to get the emergency services to fix her boiler after it started sparking"), censorious ("She has called for the abolition of the Sun newspaper’s topless Page 3 photoshoots"), and abrasive. (When she asked a parliamentary question about the use of the nonexistent "date rape" drug progesterex and was informed that she had just fallen for an old email hoax, she went on the attack again, saying "they need to do more to discover the unearthly monster who sends them out" and of the government that "their cavalier attitude will not do"). She's the kind of person people try to appease, just to get relief from the pain, and if they don't get the idea themselves that they should make concessions, she enters the room demanding them. (When she was appointed as a junior minister for Equalities she announced herself before the official announcement and "expected" compromise from her senior minister on the issue of more rights for homosexuals, which she is hot for and her senior minister was not.)

Her signature move has been to advance "positive action plans" to remedy "female under-representation in the workforce".

"It will also mean that a manager will be able lawfully to hire a black man over a white man, a homosexual man over a heterosexual man, if they have the same skill set.

Lynne Featherstone, the Equalities minister, denied the plans were about “political correctness, or red tape, or quotas” and would help make the workplace fairer.""

This is not irrelevant to a discussion of what "equality" means, because the nature of the people driving the "equalities" juggernaut dictates the way such vague and flexible words as "fairness" are interpreted in practice. They are interpreted by people with intense anti-White sentiments and ethnic and who have historic grievances against Whites as a license to break down the formerly "hegemonic" White culture, including family culture, and in this way displace, disempower and demean White men, their main enemy. Black men over White men? Yes, more of that? Homosexuals over heterosexuals? Yes, more of that! Men down, women up? Yes, more of that! That is their attitude. They want to turn our culture upside down and inside out, and they are succeeding.

When people like Lynne Featherstone are influential, "fairness" means what feels "fair" to people who are extremely hostile to us, and who are practically impossible to argue with because of their high intelligence and gift of the gab, their aggressiveness and strong biases, and their power and ability to settle the argument by making their opinions law (or "guidelines" or judicial or administrative "interpretations" that can have the force of law).

We are kidding ourselves if we think that our arguments against the one-sided destructiveness of "equality" dogman will ever count for anything with people like Lynne Feathersone. Whatever we say they will not be persuaded.

While they have power, in politics, academia, finance, the mass media and so on, people like Lynne Featherstone (Jews and people from other, equally clever, wealthy, influential and ethnically hostile "minorities") will wield it to our harm, and they will continue to love the one-sided sword they wield against the people they have grievances against, namely "pale and male" traditional Westerners.

Realistically, at some point they are going to have to be sidelined and their influence reduced, or they will continue to successfully attack our vital institutions, including the traditional White family, and we will continue to go downhill.

Vague and flexible words such as "fairness" are interpreted by people who have intense anti-White sentiments and who have historic grievances against Whites as a license to break down the formerly "hegemonic" White culture.

Black men over White men? Yes, more of that! Homosexuals over heterosexuals? Yes, more of that! Men down, women up? Yes, more of that! That is their attitude. They want to turn our culture upside down and inside out, and they are succeeding.

That's clearer, I hope.

Ethnic group A wants to break down the culture of formerly dominant ethnic group B, which ethnic group A perceives negatively as a rival for power that has gravely wronged ethnic group A. Let "ethnic group A" equal Jews or Somalis (if Somalis become equally intellectually dominant yet socially "invisible" in our power structure) and let "ethnic group B" equal us or any equally naive, tolerant, morally universalistic and idealistic race, and you have a mess in the making.

It's a really dull mess, from the point of abstract theorizing. But ethnic conflict is such a powerful force that you can't ignore it and have any respect for truth. It is going to be relevant to the culture of ethnic group B when ethnic group A becomes influential, and parochial, inward-looking discussions of the inherent logic of the philosophies of ethnic group B are not going to be adequate to describe what happens next or to recommend adequate remedies for the social evils that will inevitably arise.

By the way, this is a prediction of further chaos as Asians and other groups are gradually "stood up" as effective rivals and enemies of the Whites. They too will impose their own agendas, to the confusion of the "acceptable targets" that is Whites. And again, the social evils that will result won't be predictable just from the inner logic of White ideals, nor will it be possible to address them adequately without a push to sideline the people aggressively pushing their new anti-White ideas.

The trouble is that straight people have already redefined marriage that way. Andrew Sullivan pointed this out years ago, basically saying that if straight marriage was still about the traditional complementarian scheme, durable, and focused on offspring/family life, the argument in favor of gay marriage would be much weaker -- but straight people already redefined marriage as being about self-actualization, love and happiness, rather than commitment or children and family. When straight people are redefining marriage themselves that way, it's hard to keep the gays out of it, because the essential elements are no longer what they used to be.

And, in fact, polygamy will have to be legalized at some point in the not too distant future because of this as well. There is already a case winding its way through the Canadian legal system challenging the polygamy ban on the same grounds that the same-sex marriage ban was (successfully) challenged. You can't really draw a distinction there, other than the seemingly arbitrary "one" versus "one or more", which seems as arbitrary as "man and woman" versus "partner and partner". There is no legal logic between the two positions. There is, of course, a big sentimental difference, which is why I thing the poly crowd will have to go the court route even more than the gay crowd did, but I fully expect that poly marriages will be legalized sometime in the next 20-30 years if not sooner. It just follows the same legal logic that was laid out for gay marriage, really.

Brendan, I half agree with you, in that no-fault divorce radically changed marriage, and the new form of marriage was harder to defend intact and easier to impose further mutations on. (As well as the points you raise, the argument that gay marriage was no good for kids got weaker when the ordinary "slip-knot" form of heterosexual marriage routinely produced terrible results for kids. Clearly, whatever the cant, the welfare of children was no longer a decisive influence on marriage.)

But it wasn't so much "heterosexuals did this to themselves" as "the most powerful people in society did this to everyone" with little consultation and clean against the culture for a lot of people.

For a long time after, even in the face of a flood of divorces, many people didn't quite "get" how their rights had been destroyed. For example, a loyal woman, betrayed by her husband, would say she "wasn't going to give him a divorce". But under the new laws it wasn't a question of her giving anything; she was dumped, and the law was all with the betrayer.

Gradually people, especially women in the marginal cases, adjusted to the fact that the rules had changed, and started to go after the cash and prizes the new system offered for aggressive divorce.

"Don't get wrapped around the axle with the Jew thing. It isn't like there aren't a bazillion gentile whites who think the exact same thing."

Not a bazillion. But enough to do awesome damage, with the international elite / intellectual climate and the mass media always in their favor.

And it's not just women either. There were a lot of male feminists early on who thought this was a great way to be super-gallant to the ladies at zero cost to themselves (and without a thought to the cost to other men, the children of divorce and the consequences to future generations). It's not like Germaine Greer personally voted in the Family Law Act of 1975.

You've presented your case much more reasonably than it's normally argued for. And I don't doubt that some of your case is valid.

But what we really need to understand is not why some influential members of various minority groups want to dissolve the majority. We have to take that as a given.

What is ruinous, and what has to be understood and fought against, is why the Anglo or Euro elites adopt a suicidally liberal politics.

That's particularly clear to an Australian of my generation. When I was growing up the in the 1980s 90% of the elite was mainstream Anglo. And yet it was this Anglo elite which was the most obnoxiously liberal. In fact, they were almost all left-liberal true believers. It was a core part of their identity.

The media here was controlled by Anglos, the politicians were nearly all Anglos, and so were the artists. Power was held by liberal white men.

But there was nothing in the political world view held by either the left or the right to uphold a traditional nationalism. The liberal right saw things from the point of view of the abstracted individual seeking opportunity in a market society; the liberal left complained about unequal conditions facing such abstracted individuals.

Anyone who still held to a traditional nationalism was dismissed as having "irrational" views of some sort: as being uneducated, or prejudiced, or fearful, or reacting to adverse economic conditions.

That's not surprising given that a traditional nationalism simply didn't fit within the political orthodoxy held by the Anglo political class.

So we need to disrupt the process by which young Anglos are drawn into an orthodox liberalism. That involves both criticising liberalism and presenting an alternative. I don't think we've been good at doing that in the past, though we're getting better.

Mark Richardson: "But what we really need to understand is not why some influential members of various minority groups want to dissolve the majority. We have to take that as a given."

OK. Then I won't say much about Jerzy Zubrzycki, the father of Australian multiculturalism. We can agree that a Polish Catholic too has the same obvious motive to use his intellectual prowess and influence to break up the homogenous ethnic population that welcomed him. (No Semitic genes needed.)

-

Mark Richardson: "What is ruinous, and what has to be understood and fought against, is why the Anglo or Euro elites adopt a suicidally liberal politics."

Yup. The intellectual ethnic outsider had an obvious motive to evangelize Whitlam, Fraser and then Howard to his cause, but what was their motive to listen to him?

They certainly weren't listening to everyone. There were masses of ordinary Australians that wanted nothing like this, and Hawke made a point of taking the multicultural issue out of politics, agreeing with Fraser (against older Labour ideas and the interests of the White working class) and giving anti-multiculturalists no way to vote for their opinion.

The politicians were listening, but they were deaf in one ear, and the other heard ... well the nature of what they were willing to listen to and why might be where we disagree. (In part. I think we have a lot of agreement.)

I suspect they were willing to listen to what was international and prestigious, and not to what was local and prole, and that was how the intellectual revolution came about. I also think they were willing to listen to what was seemingly universal and thus able to be applied without reservation to the unique conditions of Australia, and they were not willing to listen to any overseas thinkers that tied their ideas closely to local conditions and traditions. (Which pretty much lets out conservatives thought as an influence right there.)

-

Mark Richardson: "That's particularly clear to an Australian of my generation. When I was growing up the in the 1980s 90% of the elite was mainstream Anglo. And yet it was this Anglo elite which was the most obnoxiously liberal. In fact, they were almost all left-liberal true believers. It was a core part of their identity."

Yup.

Right liberals like Fraser did great damage too. (One of the big things this blog does that other conservative or rightists blogs don't do is explain that false opposition. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you again for waking me up on that one.)

On the rest of what you said I have nothing to say except: well said. You're obviously right.

But doesn't it seem to you as it does to me that the revolution in thought must have been about tossing out local traditions in favour of the "intellectual luxury goods" in vogue overseas? I don't see an organic line of development from Calwell and "two Wongs don't make a White" to Whitlam's views, comrade.

It looks to like there was a turn-over of generations, and the younger generation just tossed out everything that did not conform to elite, international consensus. At a time when that consensus was becoming or had just become predominantly Jewish in the parts of the world under strong American influence.

But doesn't it seem to you as it does to me that the revolution in thought must have been about tossing out local traditions in favour of the "intellectual luxury goods" in vogue overseas?

Well, I agree that at least some political/intellectual influence from overseas is likely.

But I'm not so sure that you can speak of a revolution in thought in the post war period.

The Australian war cabinet decided in the early 1940s to make Australia a multiethnic society. The men who made that decision would have been born in the 1890s or thereabouts. Calwell was one of those men who made the fateful decision to abandon the existing national identity.

So you have to look back to the early 1900s when these men were growing up to seek reasons for what happened in the early 1940s.

And the problem as I see it is a shift in the left and the labour movement. In 1900, the emerging labour movement was still generally a nationalist one. The views of rank and file workers were reflected in the political positions taken by the early labour movement politicians.

But during the course of the early 1900s that shifted to an internationalism. John Curtin, for instance, who was PM when the cabinet decision was made in the early 1940s, entered politics as a Mannite internationalist socialist.

It would be interesting for an Australian historian to track the progress of what happened in the 1920s and 30s. There seems to have been some resistance by returned soldiers after WWI, but soon after that the traditionalist voices are lost and by the late 30s Australian intellectuals are radically modern, with a fair number joining or sympathising with the Communist Party.

The only organised resistance seems to have come from the Catholic Church - where was an organised traditionalism from the 85% who were not Catholic?

As an example of things that were going wrong in Australia, the most influential philosopher in Australia in the early 1940s (who was appointed to his position in the 1920s) was a Scottish born man by the name of John Anderson.

Andersonianism survived to be a key influence on Germaine Greer and other members of the Sydney push - some of whom played a significant role in the 1960s counterculture.

What do we know about left wingers in general? We know that they usually don't have children or if they do they only have one or two and those children often have problems. We know that heir marriages don't last. We know that they're gradually getting stupider as their ideology takes over from their ability to reason or justify their points. We know that they're usually emotional basket cases. We know they're impractical and short term in their thinking, have to be frequently bailed out by others and don't plan ahead or effectively build. Specifically we know that they're phenomenally self destructive, have little impulse control, live in the moment, and surrender to their sensations to their detriment. As was pointed out Lynne Featherstone demonstrates all of these characteristics.

In short with all of these traits over the long term they're stuffed. They in elements have the hallmarks of a fever that has to be sweated out. You just have to stay in the game till its passed and people's desire to survive and grow, not just live off the strong accomplishments of the past, can kick in again.

Virtually all of left and liberal wing thinking relies on the assumption of the Western European world being rich, prosperous and on top, and as this comes into doubt the self indulgent destruction of the left and individual indulgence of the liberals will be called out for what it is. You can only get away with blaming others for so long before people stop listening and so much of the left liberal movement relies on the public's tacit support. You can also only shoot yourself in the foot so many times before you lose credibility.